It’s been 10 weeks now, and I’ve been sharing a lot of info I’ve learned recently about finances. The lessons have been on various financial topics, but they all have one thing in common. They are all about learning to plan for the future.

When you’re young it’s easy to have a narrow focus. When you’re really young important things are school, friends, and what’s for dinner tonight. But even in college my focus was still relatively narrow. I was thinking about the future when I chose my major, or when I worked to get good grades or build relationships with people in my field, but that was still only planning as far into the future as “when I need to get a job after college”.

About a year after graduating I suddenly realized I had hit the point that I had been planning for all my life. All the work I did in high school and college had panned out and now I have an amazing job that I love and that pays the bills. So now what?

Well that’s what these lessons are about. When you were in high school or college planning for retirement was probably nowhere near the top of your list, if it even made it on the list in the first place. But now that you’ve made it through and come out the other side unscathed, it’s probably time to start thinking about the next piece of your future.

So the final lesson is to learn to re-prioritize. The future you had planned for is here, so now it’s time to move on to the next future. Definitely take some time to enjoy the accomplishment of getting this far. But just because you’re “an adult” now doesn’t mean you’re done!

Graduating from college is a big milestone, but even if you haven’t recently graduated I’m sure there are other milestones that you’ve reached, other goals you’ve accomplished. Congratulations! But you’re not done.

Set some new goals and priorities for yourself and start working towards them. Hint, if you’re not sure where to begin…retirement, an emergency fund, a budget, or any of the other 10 lessons are a good place to start!

I believe that anyone can do crafts and DIY projects, regardless of skill or experience. I love sharing simple craft ideas, step by step DIY project tutorials, cleaning hacks, and other tips and tricks all with one goal in mind: giving you the tools you need to “do it yourself”, complete fun projects, and make awesome things!

Hmmm, Yes. The retirement fund is one thing we have not started. We do pretty good (I think) at saving and have an emergency fund, but the retirement one is something we haven't started yet. That may be my homework for the next couple weeks…..

Nice job on these weekly posts! i am a huge nerd about money so a lot of this was familiar but it’s always good to go over it and get motivated to do better. It inspired me to actually use that Mint account I set up months ago to make a realistic budget.

Have you read any of Dave Ramsey’s books? I’m a huge fan of his, he makes it seem so, doable!

Trackbacks

[…] 10. Learn to think about the future This one is sort of a summary of the whole thing. You can make small changes now that will be hugely beneficial to you later. Planning for the future no longer means “Make sure you wake up in time to get to class tomorrow.” You’ve got to look a little further ahead than that. […]

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